Self-confidence is an attitude about your skills and abilities. It means you accept and trust yourself and have a sense of control in your life. You know your strengths and weakness well and have a positive view of yourself. Self-confidence and self-esteem are very similar, not quite Identical terms. Self-confidence can be defined as positive feelings about self and world that impact someone's actions. Self-esteem is sometimes described as the degree to which someone values him/herself. There's also a concept known as self-efficacy. Self-efficacy is someone's belief in her ability to accomplish something.
These three concepts aren't identical to each other; however, they are closely related. Self-esteem emphasizes someone's feelings about herself. Self-efficacy emphasizes the degree to which someone believes she can do something. Self-confidence, with its emphasis on both acceptance of someone's whole self and how she acts in the world because of it, is perhaps a perfect merging of self-esteem and self-efficacy.
Confidence emerges when a person has faith in himself. A confident person creates numerous opportunities for himself and fights adversities to emerge victorious. On the contrary, the thoughts of distrust and failure impede our success. Confidence is the key to success. There are numerous such examples which have demonstrated that people with self-confidence have successfully overcome difficulties and paved their own way to success, overcoming all adversities.
A village girl was able to lead the mighty French troops like the 'Joan of Arc' only because of the immense confidence she had in herself. Her staunch faith compelled even the French Emperor to follow her orders. When the British Prime Minister, William Pitt, was removed from his post, he said confidently to the Duke of Devonshire-'Only I could save this country. No one else could do this job. For the next eleven weeks, England had no Prime Minister. At the end, the responsibility of Prime Minister was given back to him.
Benjamin Disraeli is another such example. He was insulted on account of being a 'Jew'. British parliamentarians did everything they could to insult him. But he remained amidst them with all his confidence and later became the Prime Minister. He compelled even his critics to appreciate him. Similarly, common people like Napoleon, Luther Vaisey, Bismarck and Savonarola were able to make great achievements and register their names in the list of eminent personalities, solely due to their self-confidence.
The famous behavioral analyst, Grace Fleming, considers self-confidence as the key to success. In his popular book, 'Building self-confidence', he has written - 'If one wants to boost his self-confidence, first he should identify his weaknesses and then generate internal energy to overcome these weaknesses, which could be related to any aspect of our personality, like-health, complexion, family background, lifestyle, weight, attributes, habits, poverty, etc. We should reach the core of these weaknesses and seek effective remedies. When we try to face our weaknesses, we would be intimidated at first. However, we would be able to remove them and augment our confidence, only after overcoming this fear'.
Use positive self-talk:
Self-talk is that inner voice inside your head that reveals your beliefs and thoughts. When you're afraid, it means that for a long time, you've created a negative stream of self-talk that may look like this:
Today known as 'Mountain Man', he was once considered crazy. He was criticized and ridiculed. But he was least concerned about what people said about him. For a long period of twenty-two years, he kept cutting the mountains. The result of his constant endeavors was a thirty feet wide road, built across the lofty mountains, twenty-seven feet high. His efforts reduced the eighty kilometers long distance to just three kilometers. He did this all alone. While, those who criticized him, had no courage to even think about something so great.
No one can make you feel inferior without your consent
You must be logged in to post a comment.